First Dark Site Light with the 14.7"

Last night looked good and I had a favorable enough work schedule to make a trip to Columbus. This was my first time with my newly built 14.7” (373mm) alt-az-mounted, Telekit Newtonian in a dark place.  For the past several years, I have been limited to 10” at the Columbus site.  I haven’t had any larger aperture there since 2011:

https://polarisb.blogspot.com/2011/03/camping-at-dark-sky-site-3-14-2011.html

What a difference five more inches makes!  A ten inch mirror (less the secondary) provides ~70k sq. mm (less the secondary) of light collecting power. A 373mm mirror provides >100,000 sq. mm! This increase was obvious.

Everything I looked at seemed new. Compare M15 to M2!  In that aperture, they look like different classes of object.  The Double Cluster seemed to go on endlessly. Mirach’s Ghost looked like a globular.

Highlights of the night, each a first find for me, included IC10 (surprisingly big and round), NGC 147, NGC 891’s dark lane, six members of the Abell 347 cluster (just east of NGC 891), M76’s lobes (with a nebular filter), and three members of Stephan’s Quintet.

I learned some things, too.  One thing is that I need more solutions for dew: by 11, everything external was fogging up if it wasn’t heated, and water was dripping off the telescope; things are laid out around the house today to dry. But today I am basking in the glow of a great night of observing!

Horsehead, Alnitak, Flame, NGC2023 (processed Sept. 2026)

I haven't done any deep sky imaging in a year because my camera broke and the software I used became obsolete.  I've been waiting for the tech, the software, and my workload to stabilize. But when Lloyd Smith of Deep Sky West Remote Observatory let some files go, I had to give them a try.  It's been fun to work with superb data.  This is the Horsehead Nebula, of course; the star Alnitak on the left; the Flame Nebula underneath the star; and NGC 2023 just under the Horsehead.

Jupiter and Luna, Sept. 8, 2026

This was the view around 2:18 p.m. in Spring, Texas, through my TS102SD f/11 and Canon R8.  A few minutes later, the Moon moved in front of the planet!

Moon Over Jupter, Sept. 8, 2026

I set a goal to watch the moon cover Jupiter on the afternoon of Sept. 8, 2026.  I wasn't sure whether it would be cloudy and did not want to set up an equatorial mount if it was.  So I put my 102SD f/11 on a photo tripod and alt-az mount (pretty shaky) and tried to (i) film the coverup and (ii) then watch the uncovering visually.  I found the moon in the finder and then was happily filming while the coverup happened.  Here's the video with the shakes mostly edited out.  Then the clouds moved in.  Clouds covered the emergence of Jupiter from behind the moon; they cleared about five minutes after, when I got a nice view of the planet beneath a sliver of Luna.  Canon R8.

Lunar Eclipse, August 2026

When is the moon full and also half (or some other fraction)? 

During a lunar eclipse!

I always hope to capture some images of the moon moving through the earth's shadow.  In this case, I caught a glimpse of deep penumbra (image #1, note the moon's lower left) before a thunderstorm blocked the view. By the time the storm cleared, the eclipse was nearly midway, deep in the umbra (images #2 & 3). I watched for a while as clouds came and went, as the the curve of the earth's shadow moved across the moon's face (images #4 & 5). I took a final shot as the earth's shadow created a moon shape that is impossible in the moon's monthly phases (image #6).

 These images were taken with a Canon R8 through a AT60ED and 1x flattener. 

Venus, Jupiter, Luna (June 2026)

This last week, rising Venus passed Jupiter in the evening sky while the moon passed through the same field.  On Wednesday, June 17, 2026, at 2:27 p.m., in broad daylight through the space between clouds, I watched the unlit side of the moon pass in front of, blocking, the half-lit crescent Venus. It's a very cool thing to see one celestial sphere pass in front of another!  I missed Venus's emerging from the lit side of the waxing crescent moon at 3:36, but I saw it just a few minutes after.  Of course, the moon and Venus appeared to be the same shape because they were both lit by the sun and were the same angle from the sun from my view!

I did snap a few pictures this week.  All were taken with the Canon R8, the wider field with the 35mm f/1.8 STM and the narrow moon and Venus pics through the AT60ED with the 1x flattener.

This is the moon approaching Venus the night before. Venus is the bright one, and Jupiter is between it and the moon.  The two bright stars to the right of Jupiter are Pollux and Castor.

These are the moon just after the conjunction. This is pretty much how the pair looked through binoculars.

 

 

 

Gathering of Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury, June 7, 2026

Here is the view to the west after sunset on June 7, 2026, from the mountains of Tennessee north of Knoxville.  The brightest light in the heavens is Venus. To Venus's left is Jupiter.  The bright stars to the right of Venus belong to Gemini. To the lower right, between the cloud banks, spot Mercury.  This is just a phone shot with a Pixel 9 Pro.

Minima of Algol

 

Algol is in the lower left; it is the right corner of the isosceles triangle.  It should be about as bright as Mirfak, Alpha Persei, the brightest start in the frame, on the right.  Instead, it's barely brighter than the left corner of the triangle, Gorgonea Tertia.  This is Algol at its minimum, at 8:38 EST, 2-21-26, or 2:38 UT, 2-22-26. The image is a phone pic, and the gradient to the west was pretty bad, made worse by the 23% Luna just to the southwest of the frame.

Mercury Luna Conjunction, Feb. 18, 2026

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Caught this from the airport in Gainesville, Florida, with a Pixel 9XL Pro.

Jupiter, 2/6/2026 (close to midnight CST)

 

 This is the best of the night, 1250/5k with the QHYiii485C through the CFF 290 at f/20.25. I'm a dabbler in planetary thus far.

 

And here is Jupiter with Europa, best 2.5k/5k. 

Luna (Jan. 28, 2026)

Luna was 81% illuminated on the evening of Jan. 28, 2026, when I took first light with my Canon R8 through the TS 102 SD f/11. This is literally the third image taken with the camera. 
 

Saturn & Titan (11-22-2025 at 7:13 CST)

Here is Saturn with the rings edge-on. I tried to catch Titan crossing the planet's face, but by the time the sun set and the telescope and camera were set up, Titan had just slipped off.  This is best 500/2000 with the CFF 290 Classical Cassegrain at f/13.5 and QHY 5iii485c. If you look closely, another moon, Rhea, sits just to the left of the rings. Dione lurks out beyond it in the shadows.

NGC 253, Summer 2025

This is 26 hrs 40 min of LRGB data from Starbase's AFIL-40, 16" f/9.3 RC Optics, from Chile.  I've always wanted a nice color image of NGC 253, and I enjoyed working with this data. The L for this image is 85x600s, and the RGB is about equal numbers of 600s subs.  That much data on a target this bright made all the choices interesting but not terribly difficult.

M29 as a Test

I'd like to get back to imaging.  This is a second test image using my 203mm f/4.9 reflector with the Starizona Nexus 0.75x reducer. This is only 39 minutes of 180s exposures with the Player One Uranus C Pro. It's not perfect, but it's getting closer. The reddish haze from the left side of the image is not a gradient but H-alpha glow.

Titan Shadow Transit (Sept. 4, 2025)

 

Here are two finished images of Titan's shadow transiting Saturn.  These were gathered between 6 and 7 a.m. UTC (1 and 2 a.m. CDT) from my backyard.  With events like these, we take conditions as they come: the sky was a bit hazy, and seeing was not great for more than a few seconds at a time.  I'm happy to have some images.

CFF 290mm f/13.5 with a Dakin 1.5x Barlow lens; QHY5iii485c.

NGC 2903 (March 2025)

 

This not-very-deep image is just over 2.5 hours of 300-second exposures with the 203mm Synta-ONTC Newtonian at f/4.95 and the Player One Uranus C Pro.  The night was hazy, and the haze made imaging harder, I believe; this really is what the camera recorded.

M51 after months of change, work, and clouds, March 2025

 

Here is a quick M51, just 10x5' with the Player One Uranus C Pro camera and Baader MPCC II-corrected 203mm Synta-ONTC Newtonian.  About two years ago, my old camera broke; a year ago, I replaced my laptop; and six months ago, I bought a CMOS camera.  My long-time capture app, Nebulosity, is no longer updated and will not work on the new laptop.  So I've begun using SharpCap Pro for the new camera, and it works fine, but the learning curve has been tough to climb while working full-time and any number of wonderful family events.  (Also, I've been working through the Herschel 400 list visually, and that has definitely taken some nights.) The resolution with the C Pro and the Newt is very high: 0.595" per pixel, higher than any other setup I've used.  My seeing will not be up to it on some nights; I'm still thinking around that.

Jupiter at 10:45 a.m. CST, Dec. 28, 2024

 

Best 1k/5k with the QHY 458C and the Spooner-Ricks 6" f/8 at f/12.

M33, Fall 2024

This is first light with the TS 102SD, native at f/11 but telecompressed to f/6.93.  This is also first light with a Player One Uranus C Pro camera.  I haven't had a camera in a while.  So far, I'm impressed with this one.  This is 41x300s.

Double Cluster - NGC 869 & NGC 884

 

This is 37x300s with the Player One Uranus C Pro through my TS Optics 102SD f/11 and the Astro-Physics Telecompressor (CCDT67), which reduces the scope to eff. f/6.93.  This was taken from my backyard, and my subdivision lately installed new >4k streetlights with no shielding---a disaster for astronomy.  I'm doing my best here and still glad I can do something.